Line printer

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A line printer prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line.^[1] Most early line printers were impact printers.

Line printers are mostly associated with unit record equipment and the early days of digital computing, but the technology is still in use. Print speeds of 600 lines per minute^[2] (approximately 10 pages per minute) were achieved in the 1950s, later increasing to as much as 1200 lpm. Line printers print a complete line at a time and have speeds in the range of 150 to 2500 lines per minute.

Some types of impact line printers are drum printers, band-printers, and chain printers. Non-impact technologies have also been used, e.g., thermal line printers were popular in the 1970s and 1980s,^[3] some inkjet and laser printers produce output a line or a page at a time.